


This Is No Edgar Rice Burroughs Story!

by LooNEY_DAC



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 05:31:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10564599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LooNEY_DAC/pseuds/LooNEY_DAC





	

The savages grinned in their feral way, edging forward abortively as Jackson slewed the spear back and forth in silent menace. These bestial men might not understand a word of English, but they knew well enough what his movements meant: he was quite willing to slay the first one to rush his little party. Where were the others, anyway? The savages wouldn’t hold off indefinitely; his arms felt like lead already; and more of the cannibals crowded behind his original pursuers.

“DUCK!” The cry came from behind Jackson, and, as he instinctively obeyed, he glimpsed a flaming blur hurling over his head and into the middle of the savages. So, Winters had cooked up a little Molotov cocktail for their hosts? That was all to the good.

Peters tapped Jackson’s shoulder. “Let’s go. They’ll be back soon.” The three men and their rescue-ee backed cautiously down the damp stone tunnel, torches and spears high. _Oh, for a Thomson, or even my lost Garand!_ was Jackson’s wistful thought, followed by, _Might as well ask for a BAR and a few trench mortars, while you’re at it._

“Where does this lead?” Peters asked the girl, pointing to a side passage, but all he got in reply were confused gesticulations and incomprehensible babble. “Right. We’ll have to try it anyway. Winters, take point. Jackson, keep the rear watch.”

And so it went for what seemed like hours, their small group winding through the obviously volcanic tunnels uncomfortably like rats traversing a particularly troublesome maze, with escape the ultimate goal, a goal that seemed to recede with each new side tunnel branching off their route. Winters, Jackson and Peters switched out roles every so often, remaining silent. The girl made no comment, either, but the men could sense her tension.

At last, Peters, now on point, signaled for a rest, as the girl looked near to collapse. They were in a large-ish chamber where three tunnels met with bits and chunks of stone scattered untidily across the floor, some large enough to sit on. There was no sign of pursuit--for now.

“What’s your name?” The girl gave no sign of having heard Winters, just staring blankly towards the opening they’d entered the room through. Winters repeated the question, more slowly this time, as though that would help.

Just for practice, Jackson asked, in his execrable French, “A bit slow, isn’t he?” and was stunned when she giggled. When he stared at her, she put her hand over her mouth. “You’re French?” he asked with a sinking heart, and she nodded.

Winters and Peters stared at him. Wonderful. Of course she would be French, despite not looking it at all, because it was Jackson’s very worst language. Blast it, he spoke Tagalog, Cherokee, and even Manx better than French! But still, “So, what is your name, mademoiselle?”

She started jabbering away in such rapid-fire French that Jackson could barely keep up. She was Nanette Aujois, from somewhere in Picardy, and she’d been on a South Seas missionary trip with a group from her department when the war broke out. Well, they were advised to remain overseas until it all cooled down, but the local savages attacked, killing most of her group and abducting the remainder. She added a few pithy comments there about the ingratitude of the locals, but Jackson’s French wasn’t quite up to the extent of her colorful phraseology.

Peters cut in just then. “How long has she been here? How big is the savages’ nest? Does she know anything that could help us?” were his chief questions once Jackson relayed what Nanette had already related to him.

“All right, give me a minute to ask.” Jackson put the questions to Nanette as gently as his fluency, or lack thereof in this instance, would allow.

The responses were both disappointing and elating at the same time. Nanette knew a great deal about the island and its inhabitants, but nothing that could avail them under their present circumstances. Once they got back to the _Squalus_ , however (always assuming they did), her knowledge could prove vital.

“Oi!” That was Winters, keeping watch at one of the exits. “I think I heard something!” And in another instant, Jackson and Peters, having heard the muffled sounds too, had their spears at the ready for whatever might be on its way.

Instead of the ugly, painted savage faces they expected, however, Powell appeared in the aperture, leading the other three girls they’d rescued, all clumsily carrying the weapons the savages had stolen from them in the first attack. It seemed the mousy Powell had hidden depths to pull off a commando raid like that with only the three girls to help him. Then again, he was a Marine, with all that the label connoted and implied.

The girls immediately huddled together in a conference mirroring the men’s. From what Powell had seen, the rest of the squad--Krueger, Roarke, Mayhew, Smitty, and Corporal Lund--were still scouting the other side of the savages’ village. He’d tried signaling at them, but a group of savages had cut him off and forced him back into the caves, along with the girls he’d saved.

“Any sign of ‘em, Powell?” Peters asked grimly.

“Nah. They left off chasing us about half an hour ago.” Powell lowered his voice. “I think they’re scared to go any deeper into the mountain.” Great. If their stay on this island had told them anything at all thus far, it was that such fears in the natives meant something bad was waiting for them if they pressed on.

“Yeah, but we’ll have to.” Peters thought for a long, long moment. “Well, we came in one way, Powell came in the other, and there are only three ways out of this place. I guess we go this way.” He gestured with his torch. “Powell, take point.”

Their trek resumed, but a party of eight takes up much more room and, inevitably, makes much more noise than a party of four. The sounds of them traversing the various obstacles in their path masked the growing noises from ahead until it was almost too late.

Jackson had seen pictures of rats that large before, in a book on South America, which called them capybaras, but these were just plain rats, vermin grown huge on the blood offerings the savages periodically sent them. They proved fairly tough, too: mostly it took two shots from the Garands to put them down, and sometimes even three; and it seemed certain there were more of them than the group had the bullets for. “Good thing you got the guns, Powell.”

“Guns, my eye!” Powell replied. “we need a blasted flamethrower for these things!” As he spoke, he calmly blasted two or three more down.

“Sorry,” Winters quipped. “I’m fresh out of the sauce!” As befit the squad sniper and grenadier, his rats had each had their brains neatly blown out by single shots from his Springfield.

Then the worst possible thing that could have happened, did. A great roar bellowed from ahead, and the outsized rats immediately scattered like--well, rats. This was bad. Behind him, Jackson could hear Winters setting up a rifle grenade, and wished it was a howitzer.

The thing that bounded into view was straight out of a nightmare: enveloped in a sickly green glow, eyes red as fire, snarling and roaring like mad. At first, it seemed all teeth and claws, but when Jackson could get a better look, he saw it was some kind of big cat, like a cave panther. Well, he thought, at least it’s in keeping with the whole South American theme we’ve got going here with the rats. How lovely.

They hadn’t shot at it yet; neither had it done anything to them beyond snarls and hisses. It seemed thoroughly preoccupied with the rodent carcasses strewn around the tunnel. So, it looked like they’d gotten its dinner for it, but it wanted them gone while it chowed down.

Peters had had the same idea. “Everybody, stay calm,” he ordered. “Don’t shoot unless it passes that boulder yonder.” He gestured at a boulder a yard or so ahead of them. “Meanwhile, we’ll just wait it out here. Powell, cover the rear.”

Powell crept past the nook the women were huddled into, keeping low until he reached the bend they’d passed last. He set himself up behind a conveniently placed boulder and waited, as the rest of them did, for the big cat to finish gorging itself.

It was rather anticlimactic when the cat finally picked up a rat or two by the tail and slipped away, leaving a half-consumed carcass or two behind. Powell dutifully shepherded the girls out into the corridor at Peters’ word, and the group made their cautious way forward once more, each man wondering what new horrors awaited them.

Nanette touched Jackson’s arm lightly. When he turned to her, she informed him, in a rather abashed way, that a certain biological necessity was becoming ever more urgent among the girls, so if they could stop for a moment, it would be most helpful.

Jackson, not unaware of this necessity in himself, made a one-word reference to their proposed activity; then, he added a number of increasingly inaccurate adjectives to the original word, before calling to Peters. And so they took... a bathroom break, the men on watch while the ladies tried to be delicate about doing their business. Once they were done, each man went in his own turn, trying to get it over with as quickly as they could.

A question started niggling annoyingly at the back of Jackson’s mind, and, once admitted, just wouldn’t go away. He sidled up to Winters and, keeping his voice low, asked, “Are we still following that cat’s tracks?”

Winters nodded unobtrusively, then amplified his answer, his own voice low and slow. “What bothers me is this: where did the rats go? You saw how they just vanished when the cat roared.” He frowned slightly. “I hope we hit them hard enough to keep them off us.”

Agreeing, Jackson moved back to his spot as the group moved on. He hoped Nanette hadn’t seen his worry. The last thing they needed was for the girls to start panicking. One thing they’d drilled into him in Quantico was this: in combat, panic kills.

At the next turn, there was a place where the tunnel split into two. “Winters?” Peters asked, gesturing with his Garand at the two openings.

Winters shuffled up to the fork. After a long minute, he turned to the left and sniffed loudly. “Yep, I do believe I smell the sea.”

“Let’s go, then,” Peters replied, half-smiling. “Powell, take point. Jackson, take the rear.” And they were off.

None of them saw it, but they had been under observation from the time the rats had swarmed them; a cool, steady observation from cool, steady intellects. Had they proceeded along the other tunnel, though, the squad would have been attacked with a ferocity untainted by their pellucid mentalities: the ferocity of rodents cornered in their lair. These were the Mole Men, drivers of the rat herds, masters of what the locals called the Caves of Doom.

In less than an hour, they were out of the caves and into the open air... practically hanging off a cliff as they carefully crept along a winding ledge at least a hundred feet in the air. The sea crashed noisily on the jagged splinters of rocks that served as a shore so far below them. Somehow, the Mole Men kept them under observation all the while without being seen or heard.

They still had their torches, which saved their lives when the rock snakes attacked. Fast and vicious, the reptiles were terrified of fire, so fierce brandishing of the torches was all that was necessary to hold them at bay until the party could reach the open plateau.

The familiar sound of gunfire greeted them when they emerged from the jungle by the savages’ village. Another few moments brought them to what proved a perfect flanking position against a group of bow-wielding savages who had the other half of the squad pinned down. One well-placed rifle grenade and a few shots from the Garands cleared matters up nicely.

Peters reported to Corporal Lund, rather extensively. Once he had finished, their NCO frowned and moved over to where Jackson and Nanette stood. “We need to get her back to the sub,” Lund said, rather obviously.

“Well, Nanette and co are ready to go whenever you say, Corporal,” Jackson replied, but before they could continue the conversation, one of the cave cats attacked. Before it could complete its leap, twelve bullets cut it down.

“Let’s move, before more of those things get after us!” Lund shouted. This was all the squad needed to hear. Shepherding the girls into the middle of their pack, they headed through the jungle back towards the waiting submarine.

They waded through the dense underbrush, but before they’d made a dent in the journey, they nearly plunged into a grove of those carnivorous trees they’d almost run afoul of while on their way to the village. Now, the vine-tentacles reached for them eagerly, but the squad was ready with their fine-honed bayonets, and after a few futile attempts to snag them, the trees let their tentacles go slack and fall away.

Or perhaps the trees could sense danger, for the fire-breathing giant lizards (they were under orders not to call them “dragons” under any circumstances) were upon them less than ten seconds later, despite the coordinated fire of the entire squad. Fourteen, umm, giant lizards faced them in a loose circle, blocking any escape, but not breathing fire on them yet, probably in order to avoid crisping each other.

With a ping, Jackson’s Garand told him he was out of ammo, and he had no more clips to feed it. He was about to try fending off the nearest one with his bayonet when its head exploded in a shower of gore, and when he looked up, there was Fielding’s Wildcat, twirling through a victory loop as it came around to make another strafing run.


End file.
